Wednesday, 29 April 2015

Seven Stars in the Rearview (Part Two)

With
Dr. Song in place as the nominal villain of the piece, until it became
clear that others were even more “Sinister”, the globetrotting adventure
was ready to begin. Much of my early work was very uncertain, because
although I knew that the campaign
would begin in Shanghai (a setting so vivid that I could have run the
whole game there) I wasn’t sure where the players would go from there.
With Rob’s character Su Li motivated to thwart the plans of her evil
father, all I needed to do was dangle his latest
plot in front of her to drive the action. And Dr. Song, of course, was
after the titular Seven Stars of Atlantis: fabulous gemstones rumoured
to have magical powers and a connection to the lost continent itself.

I knew from the start that several Stars would already be in play:
Song’s pearl, a gem held by the Vatican, a gem held by the vanished
millionaire inventor Lawrence Kerwood, and a gem held by the
very-much-alive Anastasia Romanov. The other three, I decided,
were in Egypt (because you can’t have a pulp adventure without pyramids
and mummies), Central America (because jungle adventure!), and the last
would be in America (so I’d have an excuse to bring the characters to
New York City). After a few episodes, I decided
that the Star in America was held by Edgar Cayce, the “Sleeping
Prophet”, because he seemed like a fun contemporary character to include
– in my story, he gains some of his prophetic powers from a Star called
The Eye which grants clairvoyant abilities and the
ability to see glimpses of the past and the future. Although it was
never made explicit in the game, I had the idea that the Atlanteans
would be extra-dimensional creatures who could perceive time
differently, and The Eye was meant to tie into that.

But let’s come back to The Vatican for a moment, for the surprise
villain who made my life very complicated. I borrowed the idea of a
secret society inside the Vatican who were connected to the Inquisition
and had hunted the artifacts and servants of Atlantis
(“Custodians” of an ancient bloodline like Theodore) from a supplement
for the excellent pulp game HOLLOW EARTH EXPEDITION. The Vatican’s Ordo
Umbra and the secret society dedicated to protecting the Custodians
would make a good distraction from the real villains,
I thought, adding a layer of complexity and giving me some opportunities
to tell some of the backstory. Since one of the players had chosen a
character – Theodore – with a mysterious past, I planned to have the
Vatican kidnap him early on to bring some of that
information out. My Ordo Umbra agents were in fact laying in wait for
the player characters on the second leg of their journey, as they took a
ship from Hong Kong to Egypt, in the guise of a young woman and her
missionary father fleeing the conflict in China.
The woman was to approach Theodore as an adoring fan from his home
country, asking for an autograph as a means of getting him alone and
separate from the rest of the group. Then WHAMMO!

This was the character the players would come to know as “Doris
from Ontario”, after her earnest compliment to Theodore “You’re very big
in Ontario!” I’m sure that qualifies as damning with faint praise.

"Oh my! You're very big in Ontario!"

I had only intended Doris to be a very minor character, one that
was to show up, kidnap Teddy, then disappear. Apparently my
characterization of this minor character was charming enough that the
players really latched on to her. Jealous Su Li (who was
trying to win Teddy’s affections) decided that Doris from Ontario was a
rival, and attempted – and failed – to inflict a bout of food poisoning
on her during the voyage, which resulted in the rest of the passengers
being poisoned instead. When they arrived
at customs in Egypt, illicit goods were planted on Doris from Ontario to
complicate her earnest young life. I kept having difficulty getting a
moment when Teddy could be separated from the herd and konked over the
noggin, and so Doris continued to grow in the
players’ minds as a comic foil. When she finally fulfilled her destiny
in London, it was after Su Li had given her a message – as someone who
clearly was unconnected to the current intrigues and could be trusted to
deliver it to her friends. I think I successfully
shocked a few of my players when Doris from Ontario turned out to be a
sinister character, but that was mainly as a result of her having
overstayed her welcome and become another piece of recurring “business”
in the story.

She had become so important that it was demanded she be a part of
the finale, although that was far more than I had intended for this
minor character. Doris from Ontario ended up being included in the
battle for the Atlantean temple that the penultimate
episode focused on. Her ending, pleading for Theodore to shoot her and
end the pain of a gunshot wound in the stomach (inflicted by his
father), was probably more pathos than I could get away with reasonably.
But I feel it’s always good to subvert expectations,
and a gunfight with Doris wouldn’t really have been satisfying anyway.